London's social G spots

You've probably never considered the relative sexiness of your borough because, well, that's not what they're for is it? It's OK to identify with a postcode ('I'm such a W8 girl') or a point of the compass ('You won't catch me south of the river'), but a borough? They're just about local elections and council tax charges, right? Not any more. If Tatler can identify Britain's most social county, it must be possible to work out the relative merits of London's 33 boroughs. So, are you living in the capital's social G-spot? Read on...

10 Richmond

According to the Affluentials Report, a study commissioned by Barclay's Bank which looks at where people earning over £60,000 live, Richmond has more wealthy residents than any other London borough. A whopping 8.6 per cent of its population qualify as affluential, but they're not young. So, despite the Stones connection, Richmond is stuck at number ten.

Best assets The largest park in London with pretty deer, as well as Kew Gardens, Syon Park and lovely river views.

Celebrity residents Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall (they still live together despite the divorce, but have separate quarters and their own entrances). Rock neighbours include fellow Stone Ronnie Wood and Pete Townsend. The borough is a luvvies paradise - Richard E Grant, Nigel Havers and Dickie and David Attenborough are residents.

Average cost of two-bedroom flat £300,000.

Fame rating Low to medium. There's the Stones connection, and Richard E Grant is often spotted in the local Sainsbury's. But otherwise, it's a bit too trad.

Most desirable address Richmond Hill, especially towards the top where lucky homeowners have one of London's finest views, as painted by Turner.

Least desirable feature There's no getting around the fact that Richmond is twee. It's also on Heathrow's flight path.

Shop at Matches, 13 Hill Street, Richmond (020 8332 9733). The boutique was at the centre of a recent Jagger/Wood shopping spree. Jerry Hall and daughter Liz went to check out the latest collection, only to discover that Leah Wood had already snapped up the best stuff. Leah had popped in with Ronnie, who footed the bill as well as ordering in pizza when his daughter's retail enthusiasm flagged.

Best pulling spot The Marlborough, 46 Friars Stile Road, Richmond. But a stone's throw from Mick's mansion, so you too could be the eligible bachelor's next conquest.

Despite dubious beginnings (Shepherd's Bush was supposedly named after a dead shepherd found under a bush) and a recent 0.3 per cent drop in property values, the borough's still sexy enough to take the number nine spot.

Best assets Everyone from the Stones to Oasis has played Shepherd's Bush Empire, and there are three footie grounds (Chelsea, Fulham and QPR). Other assets include the Bush Theatre, home of new writing talent, and the arty Riverside Studios in Hammersmith. And let's not forget the BBC.

Affluentials 3.9 per cent of Islingtonites earn over £60,000 and 18 per cent are under 30.

Best assets Camden Passage antiques market is well positioned to kit out Islington's Georgian squares and Victorian terraces (and you can afford an antique or three if you can manage Islington property prices). Highbury is the place to be for the borough's footie fans.

Fame rating Medium. Obviously the presence of a major football ground helps and, for literary clout, Fagin had his Dickensian lair on Saffron Hill, Clerkenwell.

Most desirable address Richmond Avenue, N1, which is where the Blairs used to live. According to Islington estate agents, the former Blair home will be worth a least 10 per cent more than its neighbours for several decades to come.

Least desirable feature Gets a bit overwhelmingly New Labour at times and you're liable to be run over by one of those three-wheeled buggies on a Sunday afternoon.

Best pulling spot The Elbow Room, Chapel Market, if you want to meet one of Damien Hirst's entourage over a game of pool. Or the front table at Granita (020 7226 3222) if a heated debate with Tony Parsons is more your thing.

Borough shoes Football boots, to be replaced with a pair of Birkenstocks when approaching Clerkenwell.

7 Lambeth

Brixton could become England's answer to Amsterdam if cannabis caf?s are introduced as part of the local police's relaxed approach to the drug. Whether this makes Lambeth more desirable remains to be seen, but backpackers will love it, as will local purveyors of Rizla.

Fame rating High, thanks to Clapham Common which featured in Born Romantic and The End of the Affair. Lambeth Palace was used for parts of 102 Dalmatians, while Basement Jaxx spend a lot of time in Brixton. And Camberwell will always be associated with Withnail and I's Camberwell Carrot.

Most desirable address Trinity Gardens in Brixton is the borough's prettiest square.

Least desirable feature Brixton tube station can be daunting for the uninitiated on account of the number of people trying to buy or sell your travelcard.

Shop at Brixton market. The Reliance Arcade is particularly good for religious paraphenalia and wigs.

Best pulling spot Clapham Common, any evening, fifth bush to the left as you leave the tube station.

Borough shoes Retro trainers in Brixton but Campers are as casual as it gets in Clapham.

6 Kensington & Chelsea

How times have changed since the King's Road was awash with punks and Earls Court was known as Kangaroo Valley. Now everyone's very rich, or very poor ? crack dens nestle between £85 million mansions. Which is why it's only number six.

Affluentials At 8.0 per cent, K & C has the second highest number in the country. 13.7 per cent are under 30.

Best asset Portobello Road. The market is still London's best, and hip New Yorkers like Marc Jacobs and Anna Sui scour the stalls for ideas. Also worth a mention: Holland Park and its peacocks, and the pretty Albert Bridge.

Fame rating High to scorching. Even though Elvis Costello didn't want to go to Chelsea, Quentin Crisp, the Naked Civil Servant, made a bedsit on the King's Road the avant-garde residence of choice. Cult film Performance was shot in Colville Square, and the studio in Blow Up was in Pottery Lane. And no, we haven't forgotten Notting Hill.

Most desirable address Kensington Palace Gardens. A canny developer knocked numbers 18 and 19 together. The resulting property is on the market for £85 million, the most expensive London house ever.

London's G-spot if history gets you going. Parts of Southwark cathedral are over 800 years old, and there's nothing like a long discussion on the authenticity of Shakespeare's Globe to pass those long winter evenings.

Celebrity residents The borough is strangely lacking in this department unless you count Tom 'n' Nicole's brief flirtation with Dulwich.

Average cost of two-bedroom flat £220,000.

Fame rating High. What Southwark lacks in celebrities, it makes up for in films. Borough Market was in Lock, Stock, The Wings of the Dove, Entrapment, and, most recently, Bridget Jones's Diary (Bridget's flat).

Most desirable address In Dulwich Village, a period house can cost £2 million. Residents were disappointed when the Cruise family failed to materialise.

Least desirable feature The shopping centre at Elephant and Castle and the network of dank walkways underneath it. Very 'mugging scene in The Bill'.

Shop at Borough Market on a Saturday.

Best pulling spot The Rothko Room at Tate Modern for an art student searching inspiration.

Borough shoes Something thespy in suede.

4 Hackney

Thanks to all the arty types, this borough's hot. But they're being forced further east as a Shoreditch loft becomes a City boys' residence of choice. It could soon become a problem for Hackney, which comes fourth on our list.

Includes Shoreditch, Hoxton, Dalston, Clapton and Stoke Newington.

Affluentials Hackney isn't one of London's sexiest boroughs in terms of cash flow - only 1.6 per cent of residents (16.1 per cent of these under 30) earn over £60,000 which puts it 29th out of the 33 London boroughs.

Best assets Hoxton Square and White Cube2, the Hackney Empire, new music venue Ocean, and Ridley Road market.

Celebrity residents Hackney's celeb residents are mostly arty: Tracey Emin, Gilbert and George and Chris Ofili have studios near Hoxton Square. Jarvis Cocker (an honorary arty) also lives in the borough as does writer India Knight and actress Helen Baxendale.

Average cost of two-bedroom flat £196,000.

Fame rating Much improved by the efforts of residents on the run-down Nightingale Estate who have started renting it out as a film location. Sir Paul McCartney, Oasis and Blur have used the place to inject some gritty realism into their videos. The estate hit the headlines again last year when an archaeological dig unearthed evidence that prehistoric rhinoceroses once roamed the borough.

Most desirable address Art lovers are getting very excited about St George's, a new 36-flat development in Hoxton Square (apartments from around £240,000).

Least desirable feature The council, although residents are hoping the recent governmnet takeover will improve the body's PR rating.

Best pulling spot The Cantaloupe in Charlotte Road, any night. This bar/restaurant has a pick-up ambience at odds with the prevailing coolness of Old Street. Popular destination for groups of girls who think they're too hip to go on a hen night.

Borough shoes Anything with paint on them. You want to look like an artist ? even if you're not. Manolos and Jimmy's are banned as spikes tend to mess with the flow of those artistic juices.

3 Camden

Camden's sex appeal is intimately tied up with the number of celebrities who live there, particularly around Hampstead and Primrose Hill. London's G-spot? Not quite, but it's not doing badly at number three.

Affluentials 7.2 per cent of the population earn more than £60,000 a year, kind of crucial if you've got to pay more than £250,000 for a two-bed flat. 11.2 per cent of these are under 30 - a figure which is doubtless bolstered by the borough's high celeb count (well, let's face it, being young does help in the fame stakes).

Best assets Hampstead Heath, Kenwood House and Primrose Hill.

Celebrity residents Walk up and down Primrose Hill a couple of times and you're bound to bump into Ben Elton or Jude and Sadie. Stroll up to Hampstead's House on Rosslyn Hill and you'll find Nic, Liam and Gene (and possibly Vanessa Feltz) monopolising the place. What is it with celebrities and steep gradients?

Average cost of two-bedroom flat £260,000.

Fame rating Very high. This Year's Love was set in Camden as was Natural Nylon's Love, Honour and Obey, which even premiered at the Camden Odeon. Platform 4 at King's Cross plays the role of Platform 93/4 in the eagerly anticipated Harry Potter film, and Hugh Laurie and Joely Richardson filmed scenes for Maybe Baby on Hampstead Heath.

Most desirable address Bishop's Avenue - aka Millionaire's Row - is always associated with Hampstead, but it's not actually in the borough of Camden, it's in - shock horror! ? Barnet. So if you want to spend a million-plus in Camden, try Pilgrim's Lane, where a four-bedroom house starts at £1.65 million).

Least desirable feature Camden Market. You don't need a henna tattoo, a chunky knit jumper with a yin yang symbol on the front, or a hairbraid.

Shop at Rokit, 225 Camden High Street, NW1 (020 7267 3046). A vintage lover's Mecca loved by retro addicts the world over. Full of Japanese students snapping up £100-plus vintage Levi's.

Best pulling spot The ladies' ponds on Hampstead Heath (if you're a lady who prefers ladies,) or Hampstead's House on Rosslyn Hill if you're hoping to bag a celebrity.

Borough shoes High incidence of LK Bennetts on Hampstead High Street moving towards the jewelled flip-flop around Primrose Hill.

2 City of LondonIt's not just stiffs in suits, you know. Only 2.6 per cent of the residents of the City are affluentials, but 38 per cent of them are under 30. With Broadgate Shopping Centre, cool clubs like Electric Stew at the Great Eastern Hotel, boxing matches in Broadgate Circus, and a department store opening soon on King William Street, the City is now anything but a ghost town at weekends. Which is why it's number two.

Includes The Square Mile, Barbican, Liverpool Street, and Smithfield.

Affluentials 2.6 per cent. 38.5 per cent are under 30.

Best assets The view from the top of St Paul's. The ice rink in Broadgate Circus. The Barbican Centre.

Fame rating Medium. Mary Poppins fed the birds outside St Paul's, St Bart's was one of the churches in Four Weddings and a Funeral, and Entrapment saw Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones capering around the Lloyd's building. There's another Bridget Jones connection in this borough, too: the final kiss was shot outside the Montblanc shop in EC3.

Best pulling spot 6.30am, Friday morning, The Cock Tavern, East Poultry Avenue, EC1. The Smithfield Market trader's pub that opens at 6am every weekday is a top place to pick up a butcher, a raver from neighbouring Fabric, or an alcoholic.

Borough shoes John Lobb brogues.

1 Tower Hamlets

A controversial choice perhaps, but we're convinced that Tower Hamlets is London's sexiest borough. For starters, while only 2.5 per cent of its population earn over £60,000, over a quarter of them are under 30. Proof that the new generation want more for their money and are moving away from traditional rich enclaves such as Hampstead. The borough still suffers from poverty and unemployment, but there has been much improvement over recent years. Brick Lane is trendy and Bethnal Green galleries like The Approach and Flowers East rival Hoxton's, as do specialist club nights like Young Blood (one Thursday each month at the Working Man's Club, Pollard Row, E2 - Jarvis Cocker is a regular). Canary Wharf is no longer a national embarrassment full of empty offices and as many as 10 per cent of the young British athletics squad come from the borough. Tower Hamlets? It's London's social G-spot.

Celebrity residents Lots of actors and artists. Steven Berkoff, Robert De Niro, who lives at Canary Wharf when he's in town, Roger Moore, Jake and Dinos Chapman and Gillian Wearing. Kate Bush lives in a Docklands penthouse with 360-degree glass walls.

Average cost of two-bedroom flat £140,000.

Fame rating Surprisingly high. Think Oranges and Lemons (and the Bells of Bow and Stepney) and Peter Ackroyd's novel Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem. That's not forgetting the criminal element: the Kray brothers grew up here and much of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels was filmed in the borough.

Most desirable address Fashion Street. Great name, great neighbours (Gilbert and George and Jake Chapman).

Least desirable feature The Ripper walking tours. Jack 'operated' in the area, and pubs like The City Darts on Commercial Street (where he used to meet prostitutes before butchering them) are popular on the tourist track. Nice.

Best pulling spot 4.30am, Sunday morning, 24-hour Beigel Bake at the top end of Brick Lane. Weary clubbers, off-duty coppers, insomniacs: the best place for munchies in the whole of London, if not the world.

Borough shoes YSL peasant boots - but from the Seventies as opposed to now. This season, it's all about boots. And all about vintage. We told you Tower Hamlets was hip.